E-Verse Radio

Books Read or Reread for Reasons of Nostalgia by Ernest Hilbert in 2009

by Ernie on 10/01/10 at 10:39 am

Here’s my roundup of books read in the last year. It should be immediately apparent that I have no organizational principle whatsoever. I simply grab whatever catches my eye and read it. This is most immature and unbecoming, I know, but I’ve found that if I don’t read what I like it becomes a chore and I start to avoid it by ironing shirts or scrubbing the shower.

Jay McInerney, How it Ended
Robert Lowell, Lord Weary’s Castle
Hunger S. Thompson, Curse of Lono
Tim O’Brien, Going After Cacciato
W.D. Snodgrass, Not for Specialists
Philip Hoy, W.D. Snodgrass in Conversation
Rachel Wetzsteon, Home and Away
Michael Reck, Ezra Pound, a Close-Up
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Gambler (Hugh Aplin translator)
William Burroughs, Place of Dead Roads
Kay Ryan, Niagara River
Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail
Tom Wolf, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
Matthew Zapruder, The Pajamaist
Jill Alexander Esbaum, Heaven
Pictopia, Volume One
Andi Watson, Slow News Day
Saul Bellow, Humboldt’s Gift
Mountain Man Dance Moves, by the editors of McSweeney’s
Annie La Ganga, Stoners and Self-Appointed Saints
Daniel Clowes, Like a Velvet Glove Cast in Iron
Franz Wright, Wheeling Motel
Tom Wolf, The Right Stuff
Plato, Trial and Death of Socrates
Jon Stallworthy, War Poet
John Danielle, Master of Reality
Esquire Handbook of Style, by the editors of Esquire
Batton Lash, Tales of Supernatural Law
Robert Jackson, The World’s Great Battleships, from the Middle Ages to the Present
Gillian G. Gaar, In Utero
Christopher Buckley, Boomsday
Heather Green, No Omen
Kaya Oakes, Slanted and Enchanted: the Evolution of Indie Culture
Daniel Clowes, Eightball
Richard Ford, Multitude of Sins
David Cross, I Drink for a Reason
Anthony Thwaite, Ruins of Time
Peter Bagge, Buddy Does Seattle
Paul Fussell, Bad, or the Dumbing of America
Chuck Klosterman, Eating the Dinosaur
Theresa Ortolani, Endurance
Ethan Rilly, Pope Hats One
Donald Barthelme, Flying to America
John Updike, Pigeon Feathers
Allison Hoover Bartlett, The Man Who Loved Books Too Much
Malcolm Gladwell, What the Dog Saw
Jamie McKendrick, Crocodiles and Obelisks
Peter Bagge, Everyone is Stupid Except for Me
Joyce Carol Oates, Black Water
Ian McEwan, Comfort of Strangers
Sharon Olds, The Father
Jack Kerouac, Big Sur
John Updike, The Complete Henry Bech
New British Poetry, edited by Don Paterson and Charles Simic
John Updike, Bech at Bay
Jason Shinga, Bookhunter
Geoffrey Brock, Weighing Light
Tim Clayton, Hogarth
Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
Craig Arnold, Made Flesh
Danny Sugerman, Appetite for Destruction
Malcolm Gladwell, Tipping Point
Jason Lutes, Berlin, Book Two
Hugo Wilkes, Low
Craig Arnold, Shells
Douglas Coupland, Generation X
Douglas Coupland, Shampoo Planet
Tony Horowitz, Confederates in the Attic

Here are the previous two years.

2008

1.    Tom Wolfe, I am Charlotte Simmons
2.    Tom Wolfe, The Painted Word
3.    George Orwell, Road to Wigan Pier
4.    Barbara Ehrenreich, Bait and Switch
5.    Ben Katchor, Beauty Supply District
6.    Charles Burns, Big Baby
7.    George Orwell, Why I Write
8.    Tom Wolfe, In Our Time
9.    Tom Wolfe, Mauve Gloves and Madmen, Clutter and Vine
10.    Alison Bechdel, Fun Home
11.    Kimball and Kramer (eds.), Lengthened Shadows
12.    Amy Clampitt, Westward
13.    Malcolm Gladwell, Blink
14.    Robert Crumb, R. Crumb’s America
15.    Gay Talese, The Gay Talese Reader
16.    W.H. Auden, Academic Graffiti
17.    Gabrielle Bell, When I am Old
18.    Katherine Mansfield, The Garden Party and Other Stories
19.    Cusquena Paintings in the Churches of Cusco [no author]
20.    Mario Vargas Llosa, Feast of the Goat
21.    Mario Vargas Llosa, Death in the Andes
22.    Garcilaso de la Vega, The Royal Commentaries
23.    Sarah Hannah, Inflorescence
24.    T.S. Eliot, Prufrock and The Waste Land, annotated by Valden James Madson
25.    Adam Kirsch, Invasions
26.    Adam Kirsch, The Modern Element
27.    Hal Sirozitz, Before, During, and After
28.    E.A. Robinson, Selected Poems
29.    Dana Goodyear, Honey and Junk
30.    Davis McCombs, Dismal Rock
31.    Tom Wolfe, From Bauhaus to Our House
32.    David Mason, Ludlow
33.    Lynn Levin, Imaginarium
34.    George Plimpton, The Man in the Flying Lawn Chair
35.    Tom Wolfe, Hooking Up
36.    Tom Wolfe, The Pumphouse Gang
37.    Jenny Holzer, The Venice Installation
38.    Philip Roth, Everyman
39.    Simon Armitage (translator), Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
40.    Robert Lowell, Life Studies
41.    Robert Lowell, For the Union Dead
42.    Erica Dawson, Big-Eyed Afraid
43.    Ernest Hemingway, Across the River and into the Trees
44.    Drawn and Quarterly Showcase Volume One
45.    Drawn and Quarterly Showcase Volume Two
46.    Harvey Pekar, Another Day
47.    Lester Bangs, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung
48.    Alan Bullock, Hitler: A Study in Tyranny
49.    Keith Gessen, All the Sad Young Literary Men
50.    John Ashbery, A Worldly Country
51.    Nathanael West, Miss Lonelyhearts
52.    Nathanael West, Day of the Locust
53.    Sophie Hannah, Pessimism for Beginners
54.    P.G. Wodehouse, The Inimitable Jeeves
55.    J.D. Salinger, Nine Stories
56.    Mark Jarman, Unholy Sonnets
57.    W.H. Auden, As I Walked out One Evening
58.    Mary Jo Bang, Elegy
59.    Henry Taylor, Brief Candles
60.    Arthur Nersesian, The Fuck-Up
61.    Hunter S. Thompson, The Great Shark Hunt
62.    J. Allyn Rosser, Foiled Again
63.    David Leaf (ed.), KISS, Behind the Mask
64.    P.G. Wodehouse, Luck of the Woosters
65.    George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia
66.    Henry Miller, Quiet Days in Clichy
67.    Johannes Steinhoff, Final Hours
68.    Tom Disch, About the Size of It
69.    T.S. Eliot, The Cocktail Party
70.    Charles Simic, A Wedding in Hell
71.    Charles Bukowski, The Flash of Lightning Behind the Mountain
72.    Jay McInerny, Model Behavior
73.    W.S. Di Pierro, Brother Fire
74.    Chuck Palahniuk, Snuff
75.    Simon Armitage, Selected Poems
76.    David Davies, Nelson’s Navy
77.    Kevin Huizenga, Curses
78.    Eavan Boland, Outside History
79.    Joshua Ferris, And then We Came to the End
80.    Jeanette Winterson, Boating for Beginners
81.    Herman Melville, Benito Cereno
82.    Sarah Vowell, Party Cloudy Patriot
83.    Henry Miller, Tropic of Capricorn
84.    Michael Quadland, That Was Then
85.    Tom Disch, Castle of Indolence
86.    Juan Rulfo, Pedro Paramo
87.    Sarah Vowell, Assassination Vacation
88.    Tom Disch, Castle of Perseverance
89.    Tom Disch, Camp Concentration
90.    Greg Sanders, Motel Girl
91.    D.H. Lawrence, Birds, Beasts, and Flowers
92.    Howard Griffin, Conversations with Auden
93.    John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
94.    The Upanishads
95.    Hunter S. Thompson, Kingdom of Fear
96.    Ben Katchor, Julius Kniple, Real Estate Photographer
97.    Jonathan Ames, The Alcoholic
98.    Henry James, The Ambassadors
99.    Paul Fussell, Class
100.    Christian Landor, Stuff White People Like
101.    Drawn and Quarterly Showcase, Volume Four
102.    Robert Lowell, Lord Weary’s Castle
103.    Jason Lutes, Berlin: City of Stones, Part One
104.    Gahan Wilson, Monster Collection
105.    Charles Addams, Half-Baked Cookbook
106.    Robert Frost, Versed in Country Things
107.    Stewart O’Nan, Last Night at the Lobster
108.    Wendell Stacy Johnson, W.H. Auden
109.    Frederick Seidel, Cosmos Trilogy
110.    Adam Fieled, Opera Bufa [sic]
111.    Philip Larkin, Jill
112.    Joseph Epstein, Narcissus Leaves the Pool
113.    S. Eddy Bell, Lulu and Mitzy, Best Laid Plans
114.    David Yezzi, Azores
115.    Paul Siegell, Poemergency Room

2007

1. Alistaire Horne, The Age of Napoleon
2. Philip K. Dick, Selected Stories
3. Henry Reed, The Auction Sale, introduction by Jon Stallworthy
4. Tony Hoagland, What Narcissism Means to Me
5. Catullus, Odi et Amo, translated by Roy Arthur Swanson
6. Jennifer Omand, Squarecat Comics, Volume One
7. Mark Steyn, America Alone
8. W.H. Auden, About the House
9. Michel Rabagliati, Paul Moves Out
10. Jon Stallworthy, Body Language
11. Marilyn Taylor, Subject to Change
12. George Herbert, Selected Poems, edited by R.S. Thomas
13. Eric Pankey, For the New Year
14. Lynn Truss, Eats, Shoots and Leaves
15. C.K. Williams, The Vigil
16. Gustave Dore/Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Rime of the Ancient Mariner
17. C.K. Williams, Flesh and Blood
18. Frank O’Hara, Meditations in an Emergency
19. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Memories of My Melancholy Whores
20. Chris Ware, Quimby the Mouse
21. Ovid, Amores, translated by Peter Green
22. Morri Creech, Field Knowledge
23. Frederick Seidel, Ooga-Booga
24. Par Lagerkvist, The Dwarf
25. August Kleinzahler, The Strange House Travelers Keep
26. Rachel PapersMartin Amis, The Rachel Papers
27. Robinson Jeffers, Selected Poems
28. Frederick Seidel, Going Fast
29. Joshua Beckman, Shake
30. G.M. Hopkins, Poems
31. Debra Ginsberg, Waiting
32. Philip Larkin, Girl in Winter
33. W.H. Auden, The Double Man
34. Scott Donaldson, E.A. Robinson, a Life
35. Sam Lipsyte, Home Land
36. Gilbert Hernandez, Sloth
37. Peter Porter, Selected Poems
38. Lynn Truss, Talk to the Hand
39. James Merrill, Water Street
40. Maxine Hong Kingston, Woman Warrior
41. Justin Quinn, Fuselage
42. Justin Quinn, The O’o’a’a Bird
43. James Merrill, Braving the Elements
44. Michel Houelbecq, Possibility of an Island
45. Chuck Klosterman, IV
46. Peter Young, English Civil War Armies
47. Adrian Tomine, Summer Blonde
48. Philip Roth, The Dying Animal
49. Dana Gioia, Barrier of a Common Language
50. Raymond Carver, Ultramarine
51. Sarah Vowell, Take the Cannoli
52. Dana Gioia, Interrogations at Noon
53. Dana Gioia, Daily Horoscope
54. William T. Vollman, Poor People
55. Harold Brodkey, This Wild Darkness
56. Bob Dylan, Chronicles I
57. H.L. Hix, Surely as Birds Fly
58. Brian K. Vaughan and Niko Henrichon, Pride of Baghdad
59. Thomas Lux, The Cradle Place
60. Andrew Marvell, Poems, with drawings by Kurt Roesch
61. Rodney Jones, Transparent Gestures
62. Michael Schmidt, Great Modern Poets
63. David B., Epileptic
64. Scott Morse, Southpaw
65. Adrian Tomine, 32 Stories, the Best of Optic Nerve
66. Philip K. Dick, Man in the High Castle
67. X.J. Kennedy, Cross Ties, Selected Poems
68. Adriane Tomine, Optic Nerve, #5-10
69. Jeffrey Brown, Cat Getting Out of Bag
70. Seamus Heaney, District and Circle
71. Joe Queenan, Queenan Country
72. James Merrill, Country of a Thousand Years of Peace
73. W.D. Snodgrass, Not for Specialists, New and Selected Poems
74. Charles Bukowski, Come On In!
75. Jeffrey Brown, Clumsy
76. Bill Coyle, God of this World to His Prophet
77. Eavan Boland, Selected Poems
78. Sherman Alexie, Ten Little Indians
79. Jack Wiler, Fun Being Me
80. Jeffrey Brown, Every Girl is the End of the World for Me
81. Jan Schreiber, Orvietto, wood engravings by William Rueter
82. Don Paterson, Landing Light
83. David Jones, The Sleeping Lord
84. John Ashbery, Can You Hear, Bird?
85. Marilyn Taylor, Seven Very Liberal Arts
86. Ernest Hemingway, Men Without Women
87. Children In ExileJames Fenton, Children in Exile
88. Wendy Cope, Serious Concerns
89. Major Jackson, Leaving Saturn
90. Lawrence Durrell, Justine
91. Harold Rabinowitz and Rob Kaplan, eds., A Passion for Books
92. William Logan, Reputations of the Tongue
93. Wendy Cope, Making Cocoa for Kingsley Amis
94. Seamus Heaney, New Selected Poems
95. Charles Simic, Walking the Black Cat
96. Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces
97. Richard Wright, Native Son
98. William Logan, Vain Empires
99. Joe Matt, Spent
100. Jeffrey Brown, Unlikely
101. Henry James, Washington Square
102. Sharon Olds, Satan Says
103. Jeffrey Brown, Miniature Sulk
104. Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio
105. Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater
106. Justin Quinn, Waves and Trees
107. Charles Bukowski, Women
108. Rebecca Wolff, Figment
109. Par Lagerkvist, The Sybil
110. Charles Bukowski, Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Being to Bleed a Bit
111. Kurt Vonnegut, Galapagos
112. Joshua Mehigan, The Optimist
113. William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust
114. Charles Simic, Book of Gods and Devils
115. John Ashbery, Houseboat Days
116. Philip Roth, My Life as a Man
117. Yvor Winters, In Defense of Reason (includes The Morality of Poetry, The Experimental School, Poetic Convention, Primitivism and Decadence, The Influence of Meter on Poetic Convention, Maule’s Curse, The Significance of Hart Crane’s The Bridge)
118. Hart Crane, The Bridge
119. Scott Miles, Trenches
120. John Knowles, A Separate Peace
121. W.D. Snodgrass, Make Believes, Verses and Visions
122. Jeffrey Brown, Big Head
123. Jeffrey Brown, Any Early Intimacy
124. Elizabeth Dieffendorf, Books of the Century
125. David Horowitz, Indoctrination, U.
126. P.J. O’Rourke, Parliament of Whores
127. James Merrill, Scattering of Salts
128. Joshua Furst, Short People
129. Pricksongs and Descants Sarah Hannah, Longing Distance
130. William Faulkner, Light in August
131. Flannery O’Connor, Complete Stories
132. Seth, Vernacular Drawings
133. Thomas de Quincy, Confessions of an English Opium Eater
134. Ernest Hemingway, True at First light
135. Paul Muldoon, Horse Latitudes
136. C.P. Cavafy, Poems
137. John Ashbery, The Tennis Court Oath
138. Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Story of a Shipwrecked Sailor
139. Robert Coover, Pricksongs and Descants
140. Toni Morrison, Sula
141. Jeanette Winterson, Stone Gods
142. Best American Comics 2007
143. Tom Wolfe, Radical Chic and Mau-Mauing the Flak Catchers
144. Henry Green, Loving
145. Charles Bukowski, The Roominghouse Madrigals

Ernie

Ernest Hilbert is founder of E-Verse Radio.

Website - Twitter - Facebook - More Posts